











\ 



. - - ^,0^ 







^0*^ "Ko. ♦.To* «.^ 







o5°<. 



A -O 'o . » * ^G^ 










' • • • ^> 



•;?• 
A^' 



O > 




p ^ 


















'A' 






o > 



• • ♦ F ''^" 









v^*^ 









^<^' 



•0^ 
•\ o 












^^ *•-• ^ % "- <?»^ 













^*..^'.* •-^fOtol". v..*"" :'^ 



v. * «. - ' 



^:^ 



.0^ 



V 






%'-'^^' 
.<^^,, 



"1 









v^^ 



'<i. 



■f^ 






(> 



'-♦ 






English in the 
Public Schools. 



H. W. SHRYOCK. 



^? 



ENGLISH IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



-BY- 



H. ^V\^. SHRYOCK, 

TEACHER OF 

LITERATURE, RHETORIC, READING 
AND ELOCUTION, 

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS STATE 
NORMAL UNIVERSITY, 

OTRBONDSLE. 



\> 






U 



Carbondale, III , February 10, 1902. 

This address was delivered before the "School ('oiincil" at its meet- 
ing held in the parlor of the Southern Illinois Normal University on 
November 8, 1901. 

By a unanimous vote of the Council, the authorities of the institu- 
tion were asked to have the address published in suitable form for dis- 
tribution among the teachers of Southern Illinois. Upon the recom- 
mendation of the President of the University, the Board of Trustees, at 
its meeting held on January 30, 1902, ordered its publication. 

D. B. PARKINSON, President. 



D. Of It 



v\ 



i^ 



* ENGLISH IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



Before we can discuss intelligently either the amount 
of work to be done in English or the method to be fol- 
lowed it is necessary for us to examine at least briefly, 
the aim set up in the work. PVom my point of view the 
aim is twofold : First, the development of power ; sec- 
ond, the acquisition of culture. I do not mean that 
these two results are always separable in fact, that the 
acquiring of power must not also in a measure contrib- 
ute to culture, nor that culture can fail reflexively to 
augment power ; but in their type forms these two ends 
of all literary training are separable and readily dis- 
tinguishable. Capacity for power is essentially an at- 
tribute of the intellect ; it is the capacity for seeing, 
knowing, understanding ; while capacity for culture is 
just as essentially an attribute of man's emotional being, 
is the capacity for feeling, for discriminating between 
pleasurable and unpleasant experiences, for discerning 
the ideal, and for responding, not volitionally but invol- 
untarily, to its appeals. Mathematics, logic, physical 
science — these are the handmaidens of intellectual pow- 
er ; while poetry, painting, sculpture and music are the 



^Sufficient warrant for the choice of a theme covering so broad a 
range of thought will, I believe, be found in the fact that this paper was 
intended to serve as a general introduction to the special phases of the 
subject to be discussed at subsequent sessions of the School Council 
under the following heads : Choice of Subjects for Composition Work, 
Stimulation of Thought by the Teacher, Correcting of Papers, Function 
of Grammar, Extensive and Intensive Reading, The Relative Values of 
Wholes and of Selections, Supplementary Reading, Etc. H. W. S. 



ministering angels of culture. I conceive it to be pos- 
sible — I know it to be possible — for the mathematician, 
the logician or the scientist to develop mental power 
until he becomes a splendid and almost unerring ma- 
chine, or rather an unerring intelligence, to which there 
are, within his own domain, no obscurities, no mysteries ; 
and yet devoid of higher emotional capacity he may, 
in comparison with untrained poet or painter, be as cold 
and unsympathetic as Sir Artegal's Iron Man Talus. I 
do not mean that this is a necessary result of a study of 
mathematics, logic or science, or that this unemotional- 
ism must always accompany the development of power ; 
but I do mean that this result is alwa^^s possible. 

On the other hand, culture sensitizes and disciplines 
the emotions, conferring an almost infinite capacity for 
enjoying the transports of pleasure, but inflicting, too, 
an almost exquisite sensibility to the torture of pain ; 
this latter is the awful penalty that we pay for the de- 
velopment of that which is most Ciod-like within us. I do 
not, of course, refer merely to physical experiences, but 
the intensity of even physical pleasure or pain is aug- 
mented by culture ; what I have said, however, relates 
more directly to our idealistic weal or woe. It is be- 
cause of this increased sensibility that poets are usually 
the most melancholy of men ; not cursed by the hope- 
less sadness of the pessimist, but gifted with the sub- 
lime melancholy of him who wept over Jerusalem, of 
Him who agonized in Gethsemanc 

The development of power, then, and the acquisi- 
tion of culture in the above expressed meaning of 
these terms, I hold to be specifically the aim of the 
English work in our schools. In the development of 
power, and in a large me^siire in that enrichment of 



soul-life which is the end of culture, the process is 
dual in its nature ; it is first a process of incre- 
ment, and then of expression. There must be a 
regular and systematic increase of experiences ; first 
of sense experiences, and later to these must be added 
idealistic experiences. The former class the learner 
gets by looking upon leaf or flower or bird or insect or 
rock or stream or cloud or sunlit slope ; and the human 
interest is added by looking upon the succession of hu- 
man events flowing by in a never-ending stream. Or 
these sense experiences are obtained in still other ways. 
They are caught from the sob and wail of Autumn winds, 
from the rustle of leaves, the song of bird, the music of 
Summer shower, the crash of elemental strife, or, in 
Tenyson's phrase, "The lin-lan-lone of mellow bells;" 
or again they are gathered from the incense-like fra- 
grance scenting the air in depths of woodland or over 
fields of wheat or hay or corn, or the rainbow spray of 
flowers cresting every earth-wave of living green. And 
touch and taste and the temperature and muscular 
senses contribute to the augmenting of these sense 
experiences. 

Then, to enrich all this, the learner must add his 
idealistic experiences. From the lips of parents or 
teacher, or from books and pictures, he learns of the 
deeds of all the yesterdays, and of the strange world 
beyond his native hills. And thus to increase and inten- 
sify his experiences he lays under tribute the entire 
universe. 

The individual increments of sense knowledge can 
never be entirely the learner's, however, until he has 
found fitting expression for each. Furthermore, out- 
side the contributions of pictorial and statuary art his 



idealistic knowledge is obtained through the medium of 
the spoken or the written word ; hence the acquisition 
of vocabulary is a matter of the highest importance. 
Nothing can handicap a child's mental growth more 
than a meagre vocabulary. Unless one possesses a wide 
range of words one can not possibly think the widest 
range of thoughts ; and still more must one fail to make 
those sharp discriminations of thought that are the 
crowning achievements of intellectual power ; and yet 
systematic acquisition of vocabulary is seldom planned 
for in our courses of study or striven for by the teacher 
who directs the work. The teacher somehow relies 
upon the child's ability to pick up by accident the sym- 
bols by which he is to gain knowledge and interpret 
ideas. 

I am almost afraid to say how wide the range of 
one's vocabulary should be. because a statement of the 
truth will seem extravagant to those who have not given 
special thought to the subject. On the part of those 
who have taken the old text-books on rhetoric as au- 
thority there is a great misconception as to the number 
of words that a person of good intelligence must have 
at his command. Reasoning from the known fact that 
Shakespeare used but fifteen thousand words, and that 
Milton had but eight thousand, the older writers on 
rhetoric concluded that persons of only ordinary liter- 
ary ability must of necessity have vocabularies limited 
to three or four thousand words. Each new writer in 
turn copied this statement, and so through mere force 
of iteration the claim that but few persons possess vo- 
cabularies of more than four or five thousand words has 
come to be accepted without question. And, strangely 
enough, no effort has yet been made by any text-book 



writer to find out even approximately the word-range of 
a person of fairly good intelligence. 

I believe that a person who does not possess a vo- 
cabulary of twenty thousand words is a linguistic pau- 
per ; and that every person vvho finishes the high school 
course has a right to demand that the course be so 
planned as to provide for the acquisition of this number 
of words. 

Briefly stated, my reasons for believing that persons 
of fair literary attainments possess the above indicated 
vocabulary are as follows : From fairly comprehensive 
sectional tests with the vv^ords in the Shakespeare con- 
cordance I am convinced that the graduate of a good 
high school will read all of Shakespeare's works without 
consulting the glossary more than fifteen hundred times 
at the outside limit. This would argue that he pos- 
sesses a vocabulary of nearly fourteen thousand words. 
By actual count I have found in Milton's works approxi- 
mately four hundred words, barring proper nouns, not 
found in the works of Shakespeare ; and of the four 
hundred new words at least three hundred are words 
within the range of a high school graduate's vocabulary. 
Incomplete but fairly satisfactory tests have led me to 
believe that there is no great original writer that does 
not make use of at least one hundred words familiar to 
persons of good intelligence, but not found within the 
works of any other classic author ; simply because each 
author has his own peculiar range of thought that draws 
to itself its own symbols for expression. To say that 
Shakespeare used only fifteen thousand words is not to 
affirm that he did not possess thirty thousand or even 
more. His mind passed over certain ranges of thought, 
and those thoughts he set down in portraiture of Portia, 



8 

or the Jew, or Macbeth, or other of his splendid crea- 
tions ; and in this portraiture he employed a little more 
than fifteen thousand of the words at his command. 
The countless trains of thought that surged through his 
brain sometimes unuttered, at other times spoken with 
a brilliancy that gave him an ascendancy over all his 
associates — these thoughts may have called up other 
and still vaster linguistic treasures. 

If to the above fourteen thousand Shakespearean 
words at the student's command we add the vocabulary 
that he gathers from his other literature studies, his 
history, geography, mathematics and the sciences (the 
latter contribution alone amounting to over two thou- 
sand words) it will readily be seen that I have not over- 
estimated the range of the requisite vocabulary. 

Now it must be evident to anyone that a reasonable 
degree of mastery of twenty thousand words must be a 
tremenduous task. It perhaps should be stated in pas- 
sing that one's vocabulary of increment is vastly larger 
than one's vocabulary of expression. The vocabulary 
of increment fluctuates but slightly, if at all, but ordi- 
narily its movement is that of a slow but steady in- 
crease after the academic years are passed until the ap- 
proach of senility. The vocabulary of expression, on 
the other hand, is constantly fluctuating, or ebbing and 
flowing through an exceedingly wide range. One's 
command for words for oral expression is, of course, 
less regular than one's command of diction of written 
discourse. Today, as the orator speaks, an idea rises 
in his mind and troops of words come thronging before 
his mental vision, each in a general way, at least, fitting 
itself to the idea in his mind. For example, he wishes 
to express the thought that destruction follows in the 



footsteps of war, and a train of words, — demolition, 
subversion, overthrow, ruin, havoc, shipwreck, desola- 
tion, devastation, ravage, eradication, extirpation, ex- 
tinction, death, slaughter, murder, massacre, — with no 
end of phrasal combinations, — all these present them- 
selves; and from the list he selects that locution that 
most perfectly symbolizes the pictures bodied forth by 
his kindled imagination. Tomorrow, perhaps, the same 
general notion is in his mind; but because abnormal 
self-consciousness has produced a mental auto-intoxi- 
cation with its accompanying numbness, only one or 
two of the most neutral-tinted of these carriers of 
thought present themselves, or possibly not even one 
will rise at his frantic but feeble call. The writer, of 
course, is much less at the mercy of disturbing causes 
than the speaker; but every writer knows that there 
are times when words simply will not come at his bid- 
ding. The above will, I think, make clear my reason 
for using the phrase, "reasonable degree of mastery," 
and will, at the same time, indicate the difficulties of 
composition. 

The greater part of the English that we hear is of 
the colloquial order; and these home locutions we well 
nigh get a complete mastery of. But, unfortunately, 
most of our conversation themes are commonplace and 
shallow, and we are under no special obligation to call 
up from our phrasal stores the expressions that sound 
the deeper depths. And still more unfortunately, when 
we do try to send the plummet farther down, through 
a mistaken notion of propriety, we send with it usually 
the least significant of our thought symbols. Let me 
illustrate: there is perhaps not a member of this organ- 
ization who does not have at his command the word 



to 

"obloquy," and yet I am willing to hazard a guess that 
not one of 3^ou ever used the word in conversation, al- 
though it is a word that has no exact synonym, and any- 
one who has seen the fine use that Lord Macaulay 
makes of it must have appreciated how effective the 
word is, and how perfectly it fits itself to an idea that 
we have abundant occasion to express. The word "dep- 
recate" is another word in point. It has no exact syn- 
onym, and without it the idea can be expressed only in 
an awkw^ard, round-about way, and the speaker is al- 
most certain to make his expression say too little or 
too much. Now the idea back of the word "deprecate" 
does not lie outside the range of our conversation 
themes; and I am certain, too, that the word is unques- 
tionably the linguistic propert}^ of every member of the 
Council; but I doubt if a half dozen of us have ever 
used it in colloquial discourse. We thus wilfully crip- 
ple ourselves because of a certain language bashfulness 
or timidity. I am not so much concerned, however, with 
regard to this condition as with another immediately 
dependent upon it, — a condition that vitally affects the 
subject of this evening's discussion. What I have said 
of the two words above cited is essentially true of sev- 
eral thousands of other words. We know them and 
their phrasal combinations, we appreciate the exactness 
of expression that they carry with them, we use them 
freely in writing, but we put them in the list tabooed in 
our conversation English. 

As a result we restrict our spoken vocabulary to 
about four thousand words ; consequently the remain- 
ing sixteen thousand words that every person needs for 
thinking the widest range of thought with the necessary 
sharpness of discrimination must be obtained from our 



li 

reading. Fortunately the four thousand words that we 
learn at home, in the shop, and on the street, are the 
words that have the greatest variety of uses, and the 
widest range of idiomatic combinations. For example, 
the word "for" is used in thirty-five different construc- 
tions, the word "beat" forty-three, and the verb "to 
bear" forty-four, and the word "cut," as noun, adjective 
and verb, two hundred and eight. These may seem like 
extreme cases, but there are scores of words equally 
prolific in uses and combinations. 

In this work of extending our vocabulary beyond 
its conversation limits we are compelled to rely largely, 
and we may do it safely, too, upon the context in which 
the word occurs. The ordinary dictionary, such as the 
International, affords but little real help. This may 
have a strange sound to those who have made a fetich 
of the dictionary ; but anyone who has given any thought 
at all to the subject knows that we do not get a mastery 
of words by the dictionary use. I am certain that not 
one of us has ever added five hundred words to his vo- 
cabulary through the help given by the dictionary. 

I do not wish to be understood as opposed to ra- 
tional dictionary work. The dictionary must always 
remain the court of last appeal, but like all higher courts 
it should not be resorted to for trivial cause. What I 
protest against is, the practice of selecting long lists of 
words for the child to "look up in the dictionary"; and 
particularly the practice of requiring the child to mem- 
orize the definitions thus found and to recite them in 
the class. This is not only barbarous but idiotic. There 
are two reasons why this is so : the definition is usually 
by synonyms, or in abstract terms that may mean much 
to the trained thinker but can mean nothing to the child. 



In the second place, every word, with the exception of 
mathematical terms, both denotes and connotes. The 
denotation is merely the dictionary definition ; it is the 
ugly skeleton that must be clothed upon with life and 
beauty of connotation before the word can make an ap- 
peal to us with anything like power. I should explain, 
perhaps, that I do not use the word "connotation" as it 
is used in logic, but as it is now commonly employed in 
the text-books on rhetoric. 

Allow me to illustrate: Webster says : "An exile is 
one who quits or is banished from his native soil; the 
person expelled from his country by authority; also one 
who separates himself from his home; or, forced separ- 
ation form one's native country; expulsion from one's 
home by the civil authority, banishment; sometimes 
voluntary separation from one's native country." Then 
are added the following supposed synonyms : "Banish- 
ment, proscription, punishment." Thus the denotation 
is adaquately provided for, but the real meaning of the 
word has not even been hinted at. Its connotation has 
begun to be secured when the child has met with the 
word in the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers: 

The breaking waves dashed high 
On a stern and rock-bound coast; 
And the woods against a stormy sky 
Their giant branches tossed; * 

The heavy night liung dark 
The hills and waters o'er, — 
When a band of exiles moored their bark 
On the wild New England shore. 

And when he has put into the word the splendid 
story of heroic courage and dauntless faith, the suffer- 
ing and the heartaches, and the unutterable sadness 



13 

that swathes the memory of those fifty-two forgotten 
graves upon the Pl3miouth shore; and when to all these 
associated ideas he adds the unlanguaged homesick- 
ness that breathes through John Howard Paine's 

"An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain, — 
Ah I give me my lowly thatched cottage again 1 
With the birds singing sweetly that came at mv call. 
And give me that peace of mind dearer than all ! " 

Then henceforth there are heart-throbs that are called 
forth by either sight or sound of the word exile, and 
through its connotation it becomes a part of his life. 

The dictionary makers realize the futility of their 
efforts to put the learner into possession of the real 
meaning of a word through the process of defining, and 
seek, in some measure, to supply the connotation by 
quoting passages illustrating the use of the word whose 
meaning is sought. How far this falls short will readily 
be seen when w^e remember that the quotations given 
in the dictionaries are mere fragments; fragments, too, 
that the pupil is liable to misunderstand unless the 
teacher is by his side with suggestions and help. 

The work of expression is of course only just begun 
when the requisite words are at our command ; the next 
step is the framing of the phrasal combinations that go 
to make up the symbol for the entire thought unit. The 
work should ieg'm with spoken discourse or conversa- 
tion English ; and there is no part of the course where 
this form of composition ought to be entirely omitted. 
The reasons are readily seen. Perhaps ninety-nine per 
cent, of all the sentences that any person ever forms are 
spoken sentences. It is manifestly unwise, therefore, to 
neglect to give to the learner a training in that form of 
4isQpurse that he will use almost to the exclusion of the 



14 

other. Besides, if a child is permitted to be as careless 
in his spoken language as his native indolence prompts 
every person to be, it is evident that when he does come 
to written discourse he will have to correct a habit of 
carelessness that he has been all his life fostering. It 
may be urged that every conscientious teacher will cor- 
rect the pupil's misuse of language wherever he hears 
it, and that every recitation in every study becomes a 
composition exercise. At first glance this seemingly 
ought to be so, but as a matter of fact it never is so, and 
it ought not to be. If a child were to set a constant and 
conscious watch upon his expression, he would develop 
his self-consciousness to such an extent that his facul- 
ties would absolutely be paralyzed. Now this lamenta- 
ble result may be obviated if a regular exercise is planned 
for in which the spoken English is constantly and care- 
fully watched ; while in all other exercises the pupil 
trusts for accuracy to the habit set up through the crit- 
ical exercise just mentioned. In this way he will estab- 
lish a subconscious-selfmonitorship that will awaken 
only at a threatened error, and the conscious self will 
thus be left free to devote all of its energies to the 
thought that it is developing. 

I have just said that no teacher ever does try to 
make all of his recitations exercises in critical compo- 
sition. Now and then there is a teacher who really be- 
lieves that he does this, but as a matter of fact his criti- 
cisms are usually reserved for the grosser solecisms, 
those errors that fall within the purview of technical 
grammar. The supervision of the work of selecting the 
exact symbol, the making of proper phrasal combina- 
tions, the organization of the separate propositions into 



15 

the larger units of thought, all of these things he ignores 
entirely. 

Composition work should begin with narration, be- 
cause the child is more interested in deeds than in 
things ; furthermore, it is much easier to fit words to 
events than to objects. In narrative writing, fortunately, 
the composition outlines itself, because the time order 
in which the events occurred suggests the natural order 
for the story movement, and the composition work is 
thus comparatively simplified. 

The difficulties in descriptive writing are, however, 
very great. When we look upon an object all of the 
details break upon the retina simultaneously, and time 
does not enter into the making of the picture. But 
when we come to make the word picture the time ele- 
ment must be taken into account. The writer selects 
all of the details that help to make the object an indi- 
vidual ; each detail is imaged in words, one detail be- 
ing given after the other, and all must be held in mind 
until the list of essentials is completed ; then all must 
be rethought into the unity that constitutes the picture. 
It must readily be seen that it requires admirable judg- 
ment to select those details that contribute to individu- 
ality, and to organize these so that all may combine in 
the final unity. 

In spite, however, of the inherent difficulties in de- 
scriptive composition, this kind of work can not long be 
delayed ; its educative value is too great. The nature 
study work must furnish a considerable part of the sub- 
ject matter of the early composition. And while much 
of this may lend itself to the story form of discourse, a 
larger part will not. Besides, the nature study has a 
right to demand the help that only descriptive compo- 



i6 

sition work can give. In objective description the pupil 
must keep every sense on the alert. It is his business 
to fit words to color, form, motion, sound and the like, 
and reflexively the nature study is the gainer. 

Exposition naturally follows descriptive writing and 
must be provided for. All of the earlier work here, 
however, should be confined to that form of exposition 
that we sometimes call objective exposition ; the form 
that concerns itself with explaining the general nature 
of objects, their uses and the like, and thus links itself 
closely with descriptive writing. 

Thus far I have emphasized the expression side of 
the work, or the composition work. Let us glance briefly 
now at the increment or reading side. The earliest 
reading work has for its aim the enlargement of vocab- 
ulary, and, as I have already tried to show, this purpose 
is never lost sight of. But a stage is soon reached 
where the acquisition of vocabulary is not the chief aim. 
Furthermore, a still more marked shift occurs in the 
placing of the higher purpose emphasis. With the in- 
troduction of the study of literature proper the domi- 
nant aim ceases to be the development of power and 
passes over to the higher domain, the aquisition of cul- 
ture. Although the field of literature is so wide, one 
can hardly go astray in the selection of material for the 
work ; still there will be an economy of effort if a 
wise choice is made from the vast treasures that litera- 
ture offers. A little further on I shall present a list of 
readings, so for the present I pass by this point. 

We hear much said about a method in reading. In 
so far as the phrase, "a method in reading," is a recog- 
nition of the essential unity underlying all the creations 
pf literary art, its validity must of course be recognized, 



17 

But when the idea is made use of to warrant the same 
line of procedure in presenting The Bugle Song as that 
which would be followed in teaching one of the Spec- 
tator Papers, it is time for every lover of art to cry out 
vehemently in protest, as he would against wanton sac- 
rilege anywhere. The purpose and the method in the 
presentation of any piece of literature must be dictated 
by the purpose and the method of the author, and the 
universal child nature. The literature that we use in 
the school room presents five different and clearly 
marked types. And the method in each case, in so far 
as it is dictated by the subject matter, differs widely 
from that of each of the others. The types that we 
make use of are the poem, the novel, the drama, the 
essay, the oration. 

The poem makes its appeal to the emotions, never 
to the intellect. If the appeal is to the intellect, al- 
though it be expressed in rhythm and in rhyme, it does 
not belong to the domain of poetry, but it is merely a 
rhymed essay, a thing that can not in any sense justify its 
own existence ; if the poem makes its appeal to the will, 
and aims to rouse men to action, to uplift them, to bring 
about reform, it is not a true poem but a rhymed ora- 
tion, a sermon or an exhortation. If the poem seeks to 
portray character, then it becomes a rhymed novel, or 
perhaps a drama in monologue. Pure poetry makes its 
dominant appeal to the emotions. 

In order to understand the significance of any work 
of art it is absolutely necessary that we understand 
something of the technique of that art. A poem is the 
product of one of the most complex and difficult of all 
the arts ; and it is the very foolishness of folly to think 
that anyone can interpret a poem properly if he is ignor- 
ant of the technical means employed by the poet in the 



i8 

expression of his thought. I do not mean that the child 
must be put through a long course in poetics before be- 
ing allowed to read poetry ; but the teacher must have a 
clear knowledge of the subject and he must possess suf- 
ficient vocal skill, and a sufficiently sympathetic insight 
to enable him to understand and illustrate the leading 
technical effects. The poet has at his command tw© 
co-efficients of expression ; on the content side, conno- 
tation, a subject which I have already discussed, and all 
I need to add is that there is a connotation of phrase, 
of proposition, and, some extremists insist, even of 
stanza structure ; and imagery owes its entire effective- 
ness to connotation. 

On the form side there are two co-efficients of 
expression, rhythm and tone color. Space will not per- 
mit me to discuss these with any fullness, but that I may 
make my thought clear allow me to select one point from 
each for emphasis. Organic variatio?i in rhytliDi : The 
poet always assumes a basic rhythm that shall dominate 
the entire poem. Now, special emphasis may be se- 
cured by any rhythmic variation. Suppose the measure 
is iambic. For the purpose of enforcement the poet may 
substitute atrochee, an anapest, dactyl, spondee, pyrrhic, 
amphibrach or amphimazer. TJiat phase of tone color 
that we call harmony: There are certain words that by 
their very sound suggest their sense ; and since poetry 
on its form side is the science of sound, the poet will of 
course make a large use of these imitative words. 

Now it is not necessary for the teacher to lecture 
learnedly concerning primary, secondary, tertiary and 
quaternary rhythms and organic variations and enforce- 
ments ; nor to talk to his class about the simple or 
compound tone color, rhyme, melody, harmony, initial 
assonance, interior assonance or phonetic syzygy ; but if 



i0 

he expects to be genuinely helpful he must have a clear* 
conception of the nature and effectiveness of each of 
these instruments of expression ; and he needs sufficient 
elocutionary skill so that he may take a passage in which 
the poet has displayed unusual art and read it and re- 
read it before the class until the children have caught, 
as they readily will, the significance of the vocal move- 
ment. It should never be forgotten that all poetry is 
written to be read aloud. 

Cn the content side the same principle holds true. 
The teacher need not discuss the philosophy of conno- 
tation, but he must have a sympathetic insight and the 
skill to make the pupils feel the expressiveness of con- 
notation. He must never forget that the poet's mission 
is to make us love the ideally good and to hate that 
which is ideally evil. It is not within his province to 
enlighten our understanding as to just what the ideally 
good is, or as to the essential nature of the ideally bad. 

Finally, there is one heresy somewhat prevalent at 
present in the teaching of reading against which I wish 
to protest most earnestly ; it is the tendency in the study 
of a poem to put the emphasis upon the organization. 
Now in the study of an essay the organization is every- 
thing, but in a genuine poem there is no conscious ef- 
fort at organization. One of the greatest poems in our 
language, or in any language, a poem that for more than 
three hundred years has been making poets, is abso- 
lutely formless. It would defy the efforts of the tradi- 
tional Philadelphia lawyer to find in it any plan or con- 
tinuity of idea. But what of that? The very absence 
of definite organization is one of its charms. We wander 
now in enchanted forests, now in labyrinthine caverns, 
now in the crystal palaces in the depth of ocean. Now 
we see knights engaged in desperate combat, or drag- 



no 

bns overthrown, and fair ladles rescued. It is a vast 
congeries of fancies more splendid, more disordered 
than any devotee of hasheesh or opium ever dreamed; 
and this is the abiding charm of Spenser's Faerie Queen. 

In the case of the novels and dramas that we use 
as reading material in the schools, the dominant pur- 
pose is the delineation of character, and the pedagog- 
ical purpose is the leading of the child to form ethical 
judgments. There are other aims both in the writer's 
mind and in the pedagogical plan, but they are all sub- 
ordinate to the one just noticed, and the one dominant 
idea in the main dictates the method. Among the tech- 
nical features of the novel that need to be advertised to 
the child are the author's use of plot, personal adventure, 
accessories, method of portraying character, whether 
objective or subjective ; his attitude toward the objec- 
tive world, whether of animal sympathy, artistic sym- 
pathy, or pantheistic sympathy ; his skill in the handling 
of dialogue ; his handling of suggestion and antithesis, 
and under this latter head his use of humor and the like. 

The oration requires essentially a composite 
method, because in its nature it is composite. It makes 
its appeal, first to the understanding, second to the emo- 
tions, and lastly to the will ; hence, as in the essay, the 
organization must be emphasized ; as in the poem, the 
aesthetic or emotional enforcement must be secured ; 
and, finally, the moral judgments formed must lead to 
resolution terminating in at least a potential deed. 

In all of these methods there are some features in 
common, because the child nature is of course one of 
the factors in the method, and because of the basic unity 
in all the products of the literary art. Some of these 
common features are as follows : first, the assignments 
of the studies as wholes, regardless of the length of the 



21 

production being studied ; second, the quest for the au- 
thor's purpose ; third, the word and phrase study, in- 
cluding the mastery of words for the enlarging of the 
pupil's vocabulary ; fourth, the discussion of the art 
problems involved in the work ; fifth, the pupil's literary 
judgment must be trained, he must be set to work to 
discover the finest phrases in order that he may de- 
velop "the intoxication of the fine phrase"; and finally, 
there must be composition work planned for, not 
only because admirable subject matter is thus provided 
for the expression work, but also because the expres- 
sion may help to clarify and intensify the idealistic ex- 
perience through which the reader has passed. 

It should be remembered though that there are some 
things in literature that no beginner should attempt to 
express in words. In Matthew Arnold's phrase, every 
sensible person must feel a loathing at the attempt to 
"Express the inexpressible or to define the indefinable." 
There is one kind of expression, however, that we may 
attempt in the case of these transcendently beautiful 
thoughts, that is, elocutionary expression. It is not my 
purpose to make a plea for special training in elocution, 
but I would insist that all poetry is written to be read 
aloud, and that we fail to interpret its meaning fully if 
we do not read it aloud, and read it well. This is true, 
too, of all impassioned prose. 

To read well we must have some technical train- 
ing. I know that it is common for those who have given 
but little thought to the subject to assert that all that is 
necessary is for the reader to get the thought in mind 
and the elocutionary expression will take care of itself. 
I do not think, though, that I have ever heard even a 
reasonably good reader make this claim. These people 
who say "get the thought and the expression will take 



Hi 

care of itself" argue that we get abundant elocutionafy 
practice in our conversation. Now it is even possible 
that our conversational elocution is bad and inexpres- 
sive. But, if our tones are good and expressive in or- 
dinary discourse, still it does not follow that we can in- 
terpret great thought by means of the voice. 

In the first place, practically all of our conversation 
is on commonplace, unemotional themes that require 
the expulsive form of voice with its quick, emphatic 
down stroke. The average spoken sentence of today 
is only seven words long.* The average written sen- 
tence of today is twenty-one words long. The average 
written sentence of all of English literature is some- 
where in the thirties, probably not far from thirty-three. 

Not only are written sentences much longer than 
spoken sentences, but they are out of all proportion 
more complex. Children speak almost entirely in in- 
dependent propositions. A child says : "I went down 
town, and I saw uncle John, and he took me into his 
buggy and I rode with him," etc. I have found in our 
Sub-Normal class in oral composition that where the 
student is absorbed in the subject matter of his sentence, 
giving no conscious thought to the form, ninety-five 
per cent, of the propositions are independent. Careful 
observation leads me to believe that the person who, 
in conversation, makes use of less than ninety per 
cent, of independent propositions, is exceptional. From 
the foregoing it will be seen that nearly all of our nat- 
ural drill in oral expression is upon commonplace 
themes, expressed in short, simple, independent propo- 
sitions. Now, every positive, independent proposition 
requires a full fall of the voice; while the dependent 

*Since the above was written I have learned that Prof. Sherman, of 
the "University of Nebraska, estimates the average English spoken sen- 
tence at ten words. 



23 

proposition requires the suspension of the voice, or 
what is still more difficult and more finely expressive, 
the half bend of the voice. Besides all this, the genu- 
inely great poems, such as Paradise Lost and In Memor- 
iam, owe a large part of their beauty to their long 
drawn out, highly involved sentences, through which no 
one but the trained reader can effectively send his voice. 

There remains still a most important consideration. 
Nearly all of our conversation themes are common- 
place and unemotional. In the main they require the 
expulsive form of voice, pure tone, radical stress, me- 
dium rate, volume and pitch. In contrast with all this 
I think it may be safely affirmed that there is not one 
line in a thousand in true poetry, or in impassioned 
prose, that requires this combination of the vocal ele- 
ments. I suppose the dominant combination for the 
greater part of poetry and impassioned prose would be 
as follows: effusive or explosive form, pure-orotund 
quality, median-thorough stress, with wide variations 
in volume, pitch and rate. It is sheer nonsense to in- 
sist that these unusual combinations will be natural and 
easy for the reader to make simply because he grasps 
the thought that he is trying to interpret by means of 
the voice. 

I know that sensible persons are sometimes afraid 
to attempt to read well because they have a dread of 
appearing affected. It should be remembered, though, 
that there are two kinds of affectation in reading ; the 
one consists in the overdoing of expression, the other 
consists in the underdoing of it. Good taste is as seri- 
ously offended by the one method of procedure as by 
the other. 

In closing this paper I wish to submit a list of selec- 
tions offering about one-half the material for the read- 
ing work beyond the Fourth Grade. I believe these 
selections should be read in every school : 



24 

Lucy Gray, Song of Marion's Men, Lord Ullin's 
Daughter, Queen of May, Lochiel's Warning, The Old 
Arm Chair, We Are Seven, Horatius at the Bridge, 
Marco Bozzaris, Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, Sheri- 
dan's Ride, Battle of Beal an Duine, Inch Cape Rock, 
Three Fishers, The Heritage, Elegy in a Country 
Church-yard, Those Evening Bells, The Universal 
Prayer, The Closing Scene, The Bugle Song, Lines on 
Receipt of my Mother's Picture, For a' That and a' 
That, The Death of the Flowers, The F"ringed Gentian, 
Lines to a Water Fowl, The Chambered Nautilus, 
Tintern Abbey, Intimations of Immortality, L' Allegro, 
II Penseroso, Prisoner of Chillon, Miles Standish, Enoch 
Arden, Snow Bound, Deserted Village, Sella, Michael, 
Vision of Sir Launfal, Evangeline, Marmion, Rhyme of 
the Ancient Mariner, Merchant of Venice, Lincoln's 
Gettysburg Address, Webster's Bunker Hill Address, 
Macaulay's Essay on Milton, Silas Marner, House of 
Seven Gables, Ivanhoe. 

A part of these works might have to be read ex- 
tensively instead of intensively ; but there is no consid- 
erable portion that may well be omitted. Matthew 
Arnold said, "Culture consists in knowing the best 
thoughts that have ever been spoken or written." I be- 
lieve the above list contains nothing that does not be- 
long in this category. In these works we find imaged 
every form of objective beauty, whether of wood or field 
or stream, light or shade, calm or tumultuous seas, cloud- 
land or sun-gilt niountain peak. Man's noblest thoughts 
are here expressed, and in these works the noblest 
deeds that men have ever done have found time-defying 
monuments. These masterpieces reveal human life not 
as utterly commonplace, sordid and hopeless ; but they 
exhibit it surrounded with an atmosphere of beauty, 
irradiated by a gleam of that "light that never was on 
sea or land — the consecration and the poet's dream." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Every teacher of Eng-lish should be familiar with 
the following books in order that he may get the larger 
view of his subject : 

leaching the Language Arts — Hinsdale Appleton. 

Aim of Literary Study — Ccwsoji Macmillan. 

How to Teach Reading in the Public Schools^- (17<:7r/\ . 

Scott, Loresman & Co. 

Literary Interpretation — Toiitpkiiis Ginn & Co. 

Special Method in Reading — Mc Murray 

Pubhc School Publishing Co. 

Science of English Verse — Lanier Scribners. 

Primer of English Verse — Corson Ginn & Co. 

Science of Discourse — Tompkins Ginn & Co. 

Working Principles of Rhetoric — Gemtn^. .Ginn & Co. 
The teacher of English will get much valuable help 
from Scott and Denny's Elementary Composition, Allyn 
& Bacon; and from Lynch and McNeil's introduction 
to English Literature, American Book Co. 



Carbondale, 111.: 

Herald Steam Print, 

1902. 



H IIV 81 ^ 



J 













V^^ .». 



■7^ 












v*--- i " * " 






c'^'' 









'>^^. 



' • . • 







v" 



^ 









y 



<> <. ♦^TVT* .0*" 'cj -... ^v . 



-ov*^ : 



•^■^o* 




V ** V '* o 



..* ,& 



.♦ ..'•. ^. 



^0 .•"JJ* O^ A* 



4> ^ O " 9 




?/ ^^^"^ "^^ 

0^ .•'!.•■» O. 



'-^Vo^ 



C ♦*fle/?:^: 










c:"V' 



0^ - ♦ • 



'>-V-i-' 




BJf^^^^ 



^•^Ni'X' .^'.v«;?v.% ^''.:ifeX ^' .'-^'^^ 

Vo ^^ '^' *:SB- ^ 



>..^ 






N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 




."^^r 




ti> .** 









